At this point in the season it has become painfully obvious that abortion on television is decidedly not to be confused with abortion on demand. Viewers already have been subjected to the issue on such programs as ”Cagney and Lacey,” ”Spenser: For Hire” and ”Hotel,” and now comes ”Choices,” a made-for-TV movie (8 p.m. Monday on ABC-Ch. 7) that brings it all home by bridging the generation gap.
George C. Scott stars as Evan Granger, a prominent, 62-year-old Manhattan judge who is easing into retirement. If he has it all–a dazzling, 38-year-old second wife (Jacqueline Bisset), a tony apartment, private clubs, country home, a planned trip to Greece, rare volumes plucked out of musty Houston Street bookstores and what appears to be at least a passing acquaintance with the Park Avenue Presbyterian Church–there is something he definitely doesn`t want: another child.
At the moment he has a post-college-age son (Merwan Mehta) and a 19-year- old daughter, Terry (Melissa Gilbert), a prelaw student who comes home on semester break and–rabbit alert–starts throwing up. Previously resentful of her stepmother, Marisa, she nevertheless becomes her ally when Terry admits she has gotten pregnant by her medical-school boyfriend, Scott (Steven Flynn), who has since dumped her.
Prodded by Marisa, she finally summons the courage to tell her hard-nosed father, who, discovering that her ex-lover hasn`t even been told, explodes,
”Is it possible I haven`t communicated any morality to you at all?
Madness.”
When Terry announces that she wants an abortion–the ex-boyfriend, it turns out, is vehemently opposed, taking the position that it`s murder–her father consults a book dealing with the ethical and medical considerations
(apparently he has been unaware that there were any, but then it turns out he has never even heard of disposable diapers either), and launches into a full-scale debate with his wife.
Starting off with arguments about the exact time the fetus becomes a viable human being, they end up with pro-abortion, cool-it-on-marriage Marisa declaring, ”She`s not ready to be a wife and mother,” and anti-abortion, go- for-the-wedding Evan asserting, ”She`s not responsible; I`ll choose for her.” Daughter, however, isn`t buying. ”How can I go to law school and have a baby?” she asks Dad, who replies, ”It`s not right. You can`t take a life.”
Meanwhile, as fate and the February ratings sweeps would have it, Marisa
–a closet mother who has turned her back on her career as a concert pianist–visits the doctor and, despite having made a contract with her husband not to have children, discovers she is in a family way. Once again, Evan is furious, snapping, ”Wheel me out to his high school graduation when I`m 80.”
Ignoring the fact that her husband already has determined the child will be a boy, she nixes an abortion for herself, pleading, ”I want this baby. I didn`t know I would feel like this.” ”We made a deal,” Evan retorts, suddenly shifting his right-to-life stance to that of life-and-liberty: ”I`ve earned the right to sleep through the night. I`m done with school plays and birthday parties for 2-year-olds.” Then what he hopes is the clincher:
”There is nothing harder on a marriage than when a wife becomes a mother. I know it`s selfish, but I don`t want to lose you.”
Throughout, screenwriter Judith Parker does reasonably well with the dialogue, but is trapped by the preposterous premise, while director David Lowell Rich relies upon such shorthand devices as lingering shots of children on playgrounds and abortion-clinic protesters on line.
Scott, unsurprisingly, turns in a solid performance, as does Bisset, ganging up to make the acting job by Gilbert (”Little House on the Prairie”) even more embarrassing. And if Rich and Parker had selected just one of the story lines–the more-intriguing married-couple plot–they might have put together an equally solid movie. As such, it is diluted through contrived coincidence and character manipulation, and ends up as overambitious and unsatisfying, down to the tidied-up resolution.
”I`m so tired of this debate,” Scott sighs at one point, and that just about says it all.
”This is my only chance to have my own child,” Bisset muses at another point, and–to the everlasting credit of the makers of ”Choices”–never once mentions her biological time clock.
